Veritas Realpolitik

Monday, March 10, 2014

Welcome to the Crossroads of Misfortune and Oblivion.

When the United States was funding and training the Mujahadeen back in the 80s it was done with short-term goals in mind, and in the long-term the United States has come to regret that decision, for the Mujahadeen went on to become the Taliban and the people who were behind the 911 attacks. That bit of blowback has changed our entire society, and we now are told that we must accept the increased level of government and government intrusion into our lives. Few connect our current situation with the decisions of Reagan, but the links are easy to find.

We now find ourselves in another situation where our decisions will have long-felt ramifications. Russia has invaded the Ukraine, a nation that gave up its nuclear weapons in return for security guarantees. Those guarantees are not being met, and Russia is consolidating its hold over the Crimea. If we fail to act, and act soon, we will see the rebirth of the nuclear age. It will become painfully clear that the only true security to a nations sovereignty is their ability to completely annihilate the enemy...and nukes allow small nations that ability.

So this is the crossroads that find ourselves at, though the media seems to largely be ignoring this issue. Our choices are unpleasant but clear. We either stand with the Ukraine as we promised them we would, and risk a hot war with Russia, or we allow Russia to take Crimea, with no guarantee that they will stop there (there are other European nations with ethnic Russian minorities in them), and the understanding that getting rid of the existing nukes in this world stops now, and nations that dont have it will start to seriously consider whether developing nuclear weapons will be in their best interest.

No one wants to fight a war against Russia. They have a lot of people and historically have shown no aversion to losing millions in battle. No one wants a return to the nuclear arms race. It only increased the likelihood that unstable leaders (and they do exist) will start something that we will all come to regret. Yet those are the choices that face us. Inaction rarely wins the day...it just delays things until the other side is ready to make their move.

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

How the American People
Have Lost Sovereignty Part Three

This is the final article in the series
on how the sovereignty of the American people has been stripped from them.In the first article I discussed how the
Supreme Court has altered the original intent of the Founding Fathers by
changing corporations from Charters, which can be undone by the government, to
beings superiour to people.In the
second article I discussed how the creation of the Federal Reserve was both
unconstitutional (and this has never been dealt with) and stripped the
government of the ability to regulate money.The result has been a decimation of the value of the American
dollar.In this final article I will
discuss how the National Security Agency (NSA) has usurped the power to deal
with foreign nations, and often has an agenda that is at odds with the elected
government, as well as how NSA activities have been in violation of the
Constitution.

Edward Snowden, the NSA whistle-blower
who was forced into exile in Russia, continues to release bombshells, the likes
of which have been devastating to the confidence of the American people.It has become painfully clear to even the
most Patriotic American that their government has been lying to them and blatantly
ignoring the Constitution, which limits the powers of government.The NSA routinely monitors phone calls and
online traffic, without warrants, and it does so throughout the world.The NSA has no official place in the
Constitution; it was created in 1952, when many other changes were made to
American society that went against the Constitution (adding In God We Trust to
the currency in ’56, and adding Under God to the pledge of allegiance in ’54).As such, the NSA should be merely an arm of
the security apparatus, but the reality is that the NSA operates independently,
with no true oversight.

As such the NSA has its own agenda, and
there is nothing that says that their agenda must coincide with the elected governments’
agenda.In fact, the Snowden files show
that, quite frequently, the NSA decides that the elected government has taken
an incorrect position, and take actions to counter-act what the elected
government is doing.While this does not
clearly strip sovereignty from the people, since the NSA is not in control, but
sometimes works against the government, it does severely limit it.

When a foreign leader learns that the
NSA has been reading their personal email, it causes a rift between that nation
and the USA.When a foreign corporation
learns that the NSA has been reading their private business correspondence they
must wonder if that is the reason why they lost that last bid to an American
company.The rift grows wider.Sometimes this is just blowback (unintended
consequences) from activities that the government would sanction, but others
are purposeful in their attempt to create a rift.The word treason is thrown around a little
too casually, but it is clear that the NSA has absolutely engaged in treason
every single time it decided to work against the policies of the elected
government.Part of the problem is that
the Patriot Act gave the NSA carte blanche.

The NSA has become a shadow government,
unaccountable to the elected government, independent in action, and at times
working against the stated policies of the elected government (aka representatives
of the people).Private American
businesses will lose revenue because of the revelations, but the sovereignty
was lost the moment the NSA was allowed to operate independently.Organizations such as the NSA attract certain
people, and certain other people are excluded from even being considered by
those already entrenched.In other
words, the NSA represents a tiny sliver of the American population, and should
be kept under tight scrutiny.The very
nature of such an organization works at odds with the idea of a free and open
society.

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

How the American People
Have Lost Sovereignty, Part Two

In the first article the gradual rise of
the Corporate Personhood was detailed, showing how there is a correlation
between the rights that corporations have gained over the years through Supreme
Court rulings and limitations placed upon legislators when trying to create
laws for the benefit of society, for fear of lawsuits by corporations.In this article the Federal Reserve will be
analyzed, showing that the federal government gave up sovereignty over money
policy in a completely unconstitutional way.

The Federal Reserve was created in 1913
by Congress, and signed by Woodrow Wilson, as a way to centralize the banking
system, which the Democrats had promised to do if elected.The problem is that the Constitution puts
that responsibility on Congress;

“Section. 8.

The Congress shall have Power To lay and
collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for
the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties,
Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

·To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign
Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;”

The Constitution was never amended to transfer
this responsibility, let alone to a private corporation.In all likelihood this is because there would
be far too much opposition.It was a
shameful abrogation of the sovereign power of the people by those who were
merely holding the reigns for a brief time.Wilson and his Democrats decided to ignore the Constitutional
implications, since they did not even attempt to amend the Constitution, and
the Supreme Court has again proven to be stewards of the people in the way that
a wolf is a steward of sheep.

The first thing that needs to be
understood, for its importance cannot be understated, is that the Federal
Reserve is a privately owned corporation that pays dividends to stockholders.In order to be a bank in the United States,
the bank must purchase stock in the Federal Reserve.Federal Reserve stocks are not available to
people, though many of the banks who own stock in the Federal Reserve are
publicly traded corporations, and those stocks can be owned by people.Although the Federal Reserve is a private
corporation, it also has to deal with the government in certain ways.The President chooses who the Federal Reserve
Chairman is, though he must pick from choices provided by the Federal Reserve,
and the Chairman must report to Congress and the Government Accountability
Office.Congress can advise the Chairman
of the Federal Reserve, but he can ignore that advice without repercussions.

The Chairman of the Federal Reserve gets
to set monetary policy, and he does this in two basic ways.One, he sets the rate which banks must hold
depositors money on hand.In other
words, if the rate is set at 10%, then a bank can lend out 90% of the money
that is deposited in the bank, but must keep 10% on hand, in case depositors
wish to withdraw money. In this way
banks only have to keep a percentage of their customers’ money, and the rest
can be leant out for interest, which creates the illusion that there is more
money in the system than there really is, because the money that is lent out
eventually makes its way back into a bank, which then lends out 90%, repeating
the process over and over again.This is
called fractal reserve lending, and it is, at the logical heart of it, a
pyramid scheme.It works so long as
people believe it will work.Once people
lose faith it falls apart rapidly.

The second way the Federal Reserve
controls monetary policy is by setting the federal funds rate, which is the
rate of interest that banks who are part of the Federal Reserve can borrow
money from the Federal Reserve.When a
bank needs money, it borrows it from the Federal Reserve.The interest rate is normally ridiculously
low (.25% for 2013).Banks turn around
and lend this money out to people at a much higher rate.The money that the Federal Reserve lends to
the banks is created when the banks ask for it.When this is done the Federal Reserve tacks on a fee for the transaction
(about 6%), and that accounts for the profits of the Federal Reserve.At the end of the year all of the profits are
sent back to the Treasury…except for 6%, which is paid out as dividends to the
stockholders (aka the banks).The same
banks that borrowed the money from the Federal Reserve own the Federal
Reserve.So they borrowed from
themselves; in reality adding more US dollars to the system, thereby lessening
the value of all the dollars that were already in existence…and making six
percent on the deal on top of everything else.

If this analysis were true, we should
expect that the US dollar would have lost value continuously since the creation
of the Federal Reserve, as that six percent tacked on at the creation of
currency slowly erodes the value of that currency.That is indeed the case. The US dollar has
lost over 60% of its value compared to the British pound since the creation of
the Federal Reserve one hundred years ago.

Unfortunately corruption is the mortar
that holds the Federal Reserve System together.Banks have manipulated their positions on the boards of the Federal
Reserve to funnel money into their corporate coffers, at the expense of the
American economy.Jamie Diamond was the
CEO of JP Morgan-Chase at the same time that he was on the Federal Reserve
board, and while on the board of the Federal Reserve he orchestrated a bailout
of JP Morgan-Chase.There can be no
clearer indication that there is a conflict of interest.In the same time period Lehman Brothers was
allowed to file chapter 11.Of course,
the CEO of Lehman Brothers, Joe Gregory, did not sit on the Federal Reserve
board.

The Constitution clearly assigns
responsibility for monetary policy to Congress.The Constitution has clearly not been amended to allow that
responsibility to be transferred, in all likelihood because the American people
would not stand for it if they understood what was being done.The Federal Reserve constantly erodes the
value of US currency with the six percent profit that is sent to Federal
Reserve stockholders (banks), and is not bound by policy expectations of the
elected government.If Congress and the
President decide on one course of action, but the Federal Reserve disagrees
with that course, it can work against the intent of the elected
government.The President can remove the
sitting Chairman and choose a new one…but the Federal Reserve selects the
people that the President gets to choose from.

What is interesting is that no one has
challenged the legitimacy of the Federal Reserve at the Supreme Court
level.It seems highly unlikely that it
could survive such a challenge…though the history of the United States Supreme
Court is one of a long list of awful decisions that have eroded the power of
the American democracy.The reality is
that a small cadre of insiders is calling the shots for America’s financial
system.They disguise their actions out
in the open, using byzantine logic and industry-specific jargon to confuse
people, all the while eroding the foundation of American society.

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

This is the first in a series of three
articles discussing how the American people have lost a great deal of
their sovereignty, and thus their freedoms, since the creation of the Constitution.

Sovereignty is defined as having supreme
authority or jurisdiction over a geographical or judicial area.The American people, slowly over hundreds of
years and three major incursions, have lost a great deal of the sovereignty
that protected their freedoms.As their
areas of sovereignty have been eroded, so too have their civil rights, often
without them even realizing.This has
directly correlated with a decline in the standard of living for the average
American, and a widening of the wealth disparities that have caused a great
deal of social chaos.

The three major areas that the American
people have essentially lost control over are; their monetary system, their
security apparatus, and corporations.The monetary system was taken from the people when the Federal Reserve
became the de facto authority on currency creation, thereby giving control over
monetary policy to a privately owned corporation.Recent revelations that the NSA keeps secrets
from the elected government show that the NSA is autonomous and
unaccountable.This has resulted in a
loss of diplomatic and foreign policy sovereignty.Finally corporations have gained many of the
rights of people, allowing them to sue governments for creating laws that
reduce profits, including future profits.This has resulted in local and state governments fearful to legislate in
the best in interests of their people, for fear of lawsuits from affected
corporations.This loss of judicial
power is debilitating to governments, preventing them from reacting to changing
situations.

Working chronologically it makes sense
to start with the gradual rise of the Corporate Personhood.In 1819 the United States Supreme Court
(USSC) ruled in Dartmouth College versus Woodward that a charter was a
contract.This was exactly the opposite
of the original intent of the Founding Fathers, who had conceived them as
charters only, not contracts, and certainly not protected by the same
constitutional protections that guaranteed the freedoms of the people.The early corporations were typically
municipalities, not businesses, because the Revolution was fought not only
against Britain, but against the British East India Company, the Hudson Bay
Company, and the Massachusetts Bay Company.Large corporate businesses were not seen to be compatible with freedom
by the Founding Fathers.

In 1886 the USSC case of Santa Clara
County versus Southern Pacific Railroad, it was established that corporations have
14th amendment constitutional protections, which gave the right to
due process and equal protection under the law.Thus corporations could now sue other corporations, people, and
governments.It was cited as a precedent
for the Citizens United ruling.The next
year the USSC ruled in Mugler versus Kansas against Mugler, who claimed that
the outlawing of the sale of alcohol by the state of Kansas had destroyed the
value of the brewery that he had built only a few years earlier, at
considerable expense.He wanted
compensation for the lost value of the brewery (which could not easily be
converted to another use), but the court ruled that the state had the right to
create laws that sought to protect the health, welfare, safety or morals of the
people.

In 1919 Dodge versus Ford Motor Company
the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that the purpose of a corporation was to
maximize profits for its shareholders, rather than serve in the best interests
of society, as businesses had been viewed previously.The case involved the inventor of the
assembly line, Henry Ford, who was sued by the Dodge brothers, who together
owned 10% of the company.Ford wanted to
provide excellent salaries and expand the business with new factories in lieu
of giving out dividends, and the Dodge brothers were unhappy with his
charitable nature.The courts ruled with
greed over social well-being, and corporations grew immensely because of it.

In 1922 Pennsylvania Coal Company versus
Mahon the USSC gave corporations the right to sue governments for compensation
for lost profits (called takings) that resulted from new laws, including future
profits.Mugler vs Kansas had settled
the issue about whether the government could be sued for takings, ruling that
they could only be sued if the state physically seized property, and that any
regulations regarding the land was seen as the responsibility of government to
protect the health, safety, welfare and morals of the people.This new ruling completely contradicted the
ruling made thirty-five years earlier.It not only gave the green light to businesses that they could ignore
the public interest, but it also put pressure on legislators to ignore the
public good for fear of deep pocketed lawsuits.

In 1976 Buckley versus Valeo rules that
the right to donate to political causes is the same as speech, and therefore
protected under the first amendment.It
also protected the idea of limits to donations given, but not on how much a
campaign can spend, or whether there are limits to how much an individual can
spend in support of a candidate (no limits).This brings us to Citizens United versus the Federal Election Commision
in 2010, the case that ruled that money is speech, for all intents and
purposes.Does that make bribery
conversation?

Each of these cases has slowly eroded
the sovereignty of the American people, whose representatives fear to act in
the interest of their constituents because powerful corporate interests
threaten them with lawsuits for doing anything that hurts their bottom line, be
it laws intent on reducing pollution, tougher immigration enforcement,
improving worker standards as new data comes in, tightening restrictions on gun
sales, and a host of other issues that governments seem paralyzed in dealing
with.

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Frank Lutz is a major strategist for the Republicans, and he recently met with supporters to discuss the dangers of the occupy wall street movement. To quote Frank "I'm so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I'm frightened to death." It warms my heart, I have to admit. The point of his statement was that conservatives need to alter the language they use in order to neutralize the effects of OWS, which are, and I quote again, "They're having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism." Apparently it is not that popular anymore.

So in the coming weeks people should pay particular attention to how Republicans are speaking, which words they are avoiding and which they are using instead. Here are some specific ones to watch out for. Such a fun game!

1) Capitalism is out. Economic Freedom is in!

2) The middle class are now hardworking taxpayers.

3) Few people want jobs. Most people want CAREERS.

4) Government spending = waste (though I assume this does not include the military)

5) Real men don't compromise. They cooperate.

6) We no longer have innovators or entrepeneurs. We have small businesses and job creators.

7) Forget taxing the rich, everyone is for that. Government is taking from the rich. Ah, it's a longshot.

8) And if approached by an occupier, say "I get it." That will shut them up.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

No matter where I go it seems I am assaulted by extremism. Just the other day I was at the grocery store, and when I went to get some hamburger buns, the only choices I had were Mega-Burgers or Sliders. I went to get some basic, standard Cheerios, but all I could choose from were Chocolate Cheerios or Apple & Cinnamon Cheerios. I tried to find a standard crust pizza, but all they had to offer were Deep Dish or Thin Crust. There were plenty of different types of thin crust and deep dish, just no regular pizza. No regular Cheerios. No regular hamburger buns.

What has happened to the world? Like it or not we are getting fewer and fewer choices to pick from, though the opposite appears to be true. In the past I could pick from about four or five flavours of pizza, but only in the regular crust option. Today I can pick from over a dozen flavours in either thin crust or deep dish, but the regular crust seems to have vanished. The choice is still binary, though it has been disguised as versions 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, etc... Moderation is being squeezed out so that we can all feel like we are actually choosing.

The problem is that moderates are moderate, and it is the squeaky wheel that gets the grease. In the United States it is the Tea Party that seems to get the most media attention, even though they only represent a relatively small percentage of the American people. The art of compromise is dead, and we are all being pressured to take a side, side A or side B...and that is it! I think it is time we all saw through the false dichotemy and stopped falling for the two choice fallacy.

I say take the third path. The one you can barely see, but just feels right.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Either the realities are more complex than I realize, or the people in charge of the government and big business are there because of nepotism and not merit. At the time that it was happening I railed against the idea of giving the banks money, no strings attached but hoping they would start lending again. Hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars (well, new debt actually) given at 0% interest to the banks, the same banks that are charging most credit card holders near 30% interest. Or perhaps it is the American people who are the stupid ones to put up with this criminal behaviour.

I think the government should have skipped the middle man entirely. The government should have opened up loan offices, charging somewhere around 5% interest. People would flock to pay such low interest, and the big banks would have to lower their rates or lose business. Clearly none of these banks were in any serious danger of going out of business if they are all declaring record profits a year later. Those that do and will fail probably should fail.

So what we have is hundreds of billions of dollars lent to the banks at 0%, which they then refused to lend to people. My solution would have made the taxpayers 5%, opened up credit, and forced the big banks to also lower their rates (or lose business). It seems pretty simple to me, but of course the biggest difference in the two scenarios is WHO benefits. In the current system the big banks got free money to do what they wanted with, to be paid back at some point in the uncertain future, and the American people got deeper in debt as a nation (12 million is the current tally...imagine how much those interest payments are, and how they could be better spent on THE PEOPLE). In my scenario the American people make money and liquidity opens up.

Obama is part of the problem, because he is a much better talker than a doer. He compromises too much and too soon. He telegraphs how the opposition can manipulate his priorities until there is only a muddied mess. But a bigger problem than Obama is clearly the Senate. The very nature of the Senate is conservative in nature. It takes 60% to get legislation passed. That is a very conservative requirement. On top of that the nature of the Senate is disproportionate, so that smaller states have a greater say than their population would warrant. An analysis of the smaller states in the Union shows that they are, generally speaking, conservative in nature.

My conclusion is that progressives have no place in the United States. The system is designed to slow down all efforts at change to the point where the system in place is generations behind where the people are at. Personally, I'd scrap the system, but I am Canadian so it is not my place to do so.

About Me

I was born in Montreal, grew up in Toronto, lived in Japan and New York, and now I am back in Montreal. I was in the military (First Hussars Armoured Regiment), studied Kendo and Ninjutsu, have traveled a great deal, and love history.